Confused? You bet. That is why the most popular format is good old PDF.

We look at the different formats, PDF, RTF, TXT, HTML (the standard ones) and the more specifically ebook/ereader ones, sometimes proprietary, such as PDB, MOBI, LTF, EPUB, and a few others.

Of course the big issue is DRM – digital rights management – which people moan about but how are people supposed to be artists, build a business, provide services, etc? We also discuss that too. What do people say?

Story software (Story Lite, Story Turbo) as an ebook or electronic format

The Story Lite software can be used as an ideas generator, to help you in your writing or blogging, by allowing all notes to be viewable when you are writing.

It can also be used as an art format in its own right.

Multimedia art can be created using the multiple text layout. Some examples are on this site.

Making these available to an ereader depends on the dimensions of the Story layout.

‘He’ is the narrator’s Dad, who is a piano player at a cinema in the time of silent movies… which explains this list.

This is a very readable novel, it is more like a memoir than a conventional novel. Which is what it is supposed to be, an old lady reminisces about her life, mainly her early life with her father, an itinerant and drunken piano player.

How to write a story or book – try some of these in a short story and see how it goes – if your imagination is stuck, use some of these as modifiers. For instance, add Galloping horses – this will always liven up a scene. Perhaps use them as a metaphor if you do not want actual horses charging about in your existential office drama.

There is also the tragedy of the person who wants to be an artist but has the mind of an inspector, perhaps they end up writing science fiction, which has the most literally described fantasies. Star Trek is full of this invented technical gobbledygook.

Gnome sf sci-fi use of weapons iain m banks

Jeff Lint is very interested in the philosophy of ‘tentacled beauties‘ – which covers nearly all alien types (all of which are invented, despite their looming preponderance in the modern world) – just think how much better Darth Vader would be with tentacles instead of (as well as?) the Force.

Just watched movie Skyline – lots of tentacled beauties in there. War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise, Independence Day… all those tentacles.

Michael Crichton [RIP] added a giant squid scene to Pirate Latitudes – although this had the feel of a book that had not been given the final gloss, so that scene might have been cut if he had been working on it.

How to Write task: add a tentacled beauty to a new story, whatever the genre. Try adding a tentacled beauty to a dinner party scene.